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What is a systematic review?

Systematic review is a type of literature review. Unlike other forms of review, where authors can include any articles they consider appropriate, a systematic review aims to remove the reviewer's biases as far as possible by following a clearly defined, transparent process. There are a number of steps in the process, and each needs to be documented effectively to ensure the process can be replicated by others or repeated/updated in the future.

A systematic review starts from a clearly defined, researchable question.

A plan (protocol) is developed to ensure all available evidence on the topic can be located, along with clear criteriaidentifying what will and will not be included. This protocolis often registered with a systematic review library, facilitating peer review, and avoiding the need for others to spend time on the search.

The search is then refinedand conducted, before articles are screened for relevance, thenassessed for quality and appropriateness. Once the list of included articles is finalised, key data are extracted and analysed to produce a new perspective to the question based on the aggregated evidence.